Pedro Sánchez is not known for showing emotion. The Spanish prime minister’s ice-cold pragmatism and tactical brilliance have seen him outmaneuver the Spanish right, as well as rivals on his left flank, time and again since he became prime minister in 2018. Yet things changed on Wednesday night, as a Madrid judge accepted the petition from a far-right organization to open a political corruption and graft investigation into his wife, Begoña Gómez. Sánchez released a highly charged public letter in which he announced that he was considering resigning.

Leader of the center-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), he also canceled all his public engagements until Monday, when he will announce his decision on whether to continue. “I am a man who is deeply in love with his wife but who is powerless before the dirt and smears that are being thrown at her day after day,” Sánchez wrote. “I need to stop and reflect. I urgently need to answer the question of whether it is worth [continuing].” He also insisted that behind this campaign of harassment was the fact that the Spanish right and far right “have not accepted the election results” of last July.

This is in many ways nothing new: lawfare has, after all, been a major issue for Sánchez’s left-leaning coalition since it took office in 2020. Ever since, reactionary elements in the upper echelons of the justice system have operated as an undemocratic parallel power, aiming to discipline and undermine what they see as an “illegitimate” government. The current judicial offensive has been unrelenting since last November when Sánchez’s PSOE finalized a parliamentary alliance with Catalan nationalist parties in exchange for an amnesty law for those involved in the failed 2017 independence push.